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Heard of Kylin ?

"Frankly, I worry more about attacks we can't even see, which the Russians are good at. The Chinese are relentless and don't seem to care about getting caught. And we have seen Chinese network operations inside certain of our electricity grids."

It felt a little weird when I copy pasted that since I use a Russian antivirus..

It was a rather informative read towards current cyberwarfare situation..

Seems that this "cyber warfare" hype is the new gravy train to replace global warming

China is very vulnerable, particularly given their current dependence on pirated Microsoft software. I think that The-Spec has just demonstrated that?
(all Win 2003 boxes).

It certainly makes sense that they would want their own non-Microsoft OS and that they would want to standardise it. That makes deployment, education and training far easier and more cost effective. The product is basically Free BSD with minimal modification.

My take on this is that it is all about economics and national technological autonomy rather than cyber warfare FUD.

As I posted a few weeks ago, Cuba have already released their own version of FreeBSD called "Nova".

Basically, that's what happens when people are afraid of marginalisation.

As for a "secure OS".................there is no such thing, other than one that won't boot

If you cannot do someone any good: don't do them any harm....
As long as you did this to one of these, the least of my little ones............you did it unto Me.
What profiteth a man if he gains the entire World at the expense of his immortal soul?

WOW! .. Zone-H reports completely say a different story.. The article I’ve pointed out clearly states that chine migrated to kylin OS in 2007 for their important servers, either their webserver doesn’t fall under important category or they don’t want people to get more information on the OS and hence didn't deploy it onto public facing servers..

Anyway thanks for the link mate, its a good way to pass time early morning at office..

I think that the idea of a "secure OS" comes from them adopting ideas from the SELinux/SEBSD projects. This would make sense for them to grow their economy in the banking, other financial and e-commerce sectors.

I believe that there is now a 3.0 version of Kylin that has some of these features. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a link yet

Having worked in the military sector (in the UK) I am inclined to agree with the author of the article that military networks are maintained physically secure, and separate from the internet. Hence, a "secure OS" shouldn't really matter, as hackers (even US military ones) should not be able to get near it anyway.

Commercial interests on the other hand need the internet, so are intrinsically more vulnerable.

If you cannot do someone any good: don't do them any harm....
As long as you did this to one of these, the least of my little ones............you did it unto Me.
What profiteth a man if he gains the entire World at the expense of his immortal soul?

The kernel OS is nothing more than our well known FreeBSD, with linux binary compatibility .
Second, Secure OSs are not something new, if we remember that SE-Linux was also funded by NSA.
Third, a Chinese OS shouldn't be US's main concern on Cyber Warfare...

Guys cyberwar is about preventing the other guy from communicating, not so much about finding out what he knows. Intelligence gathering is important before the battle.

You miss the point which is that China has its own, government sponsored flavour of *nix. They are not a democracy you know.....................?

I am sure the people in Redmond do think that it is a big deal

If you cannot do someone any good: don't do them any harm....
As long as you did this to one of these, the least of my little ones............you did it unto Me.
What profiteth a man if he gains the entire World at the expense of his immortal soul?

It was/is produced under Chinese (civilian) government sponsorship and funding, but does not seem to be terribly well supported. The last desktop version dates back to 2007.

It did its job though. When the Chinese government ordered its departments to get rid of Windows 2000 and replace it with Red Flag, Gates cut the price of desktop Windows + Office to $7 per seat

Any Western government care to try the same?

Last edited by nihil; May 24th, 2009 at 02:30 AM.

If you cannot do someone any good: don't do them any harm....
As long as you did this to one of these, the least of my little ones............you did it unto Me.
What profiteth a man if he gains the entire World at the expense of his immortal soul?